Cool Collection Finds

Ancestry.com digitizes millions of records to make them available online, and we find some really amazing records in the process. The Ancestry team goes through thousands of pieces of paper – turning pages, flipping and scanning, and sometimes, one of our team members will spot someone famous, a historical figure or an important historical date. Here are a few of the amazing finds:

Abraham Lincoln’s Burial Record

This particular collection contains burial records for U.S. Veteran’s burial sites such as national cemeteries and army posts. Here you can see Abraham Lincoln’s record in this collection after his assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth. See the record here. More information is contained in the next page of the record as well.

Gregory Peck’s Passenger Record

Found in the New York Passenger Lists database, which contains records of passengers arriving at the port of New York between 1820-1957. Here you can see Peck arriving in May 1950 from Southampton, England and he is carrying with him a whopping 28 pieces of baggage.

Theodore Roosevelt’s College Lists Record

The U.S. College Student Lists from 1763-1924 are filled with all kinds of content – lists of students, faculty, alumni, etc. and includes catalogs, board proceedings, annual reports, commencement exercises, and much more. In this particular collection, we found Theodore Roosevelt in the Alumni Catalogue of George Washington University, as an honorary alumni after receiving the honorary doctor of laws degree in 1909. View the record here.

John Steinbeck’s Census Record

Although finding famous names in the census is fairly common, it’s still fun to see what notable people were doing when the census taker came a knocking. You can see here that John Steinbeck is living in Santa Clara County in California with his then wife Carol and his groundkeeper Joe Higashi. The following year he would divorce his wife, remarry and move to New York.

These are a few of our favorite finds that we have uncovered over the course of digitizing countless pages of records. We hope you find them as fun as we do!

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